Kyrgyzstan has voted to create central Asia's first parliamentary democracy, partial results show, but Russia warned this could allow extremists to seize power following ethnic violence that killed hundreds.

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, whose country shares US fears about Islamist militancy in central Asia, said the political system resulting from Sunday's Kyrgyz referendum could eventually bring the collapse of the country.

At least 283 people - possibly hundreds more - died this month in violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic which hosts US and Russian military air bases and shares a border with China.

Official results of the referendum showed that with almost all votes counted, 90.8 per cent of voters had backed a new constitution paving the way for October parliamentary elections.

Only 7.9 per cent had voted against, according to preliminary data collected from 2,190 of the country's 2,319 polling stations the Central Election Commission said on its website.

Interim leader Roza Otunbayeva, speaking before the first results were known, said Kyrgyzstan - which lies on a major drug trafficking route out of Afghanistan - had embarked on a path to establishing a "true people's democracy".

Ms Otunbayeva said the vote was too important to put off.

"On this historic day, all of us, the citizens of Kyrgyzstan, will have to make probably our most important choice of the past years," she said.

The president's powers will be curtailed and Ms Otunbyeva will remain in office until the end of 2011.

Journalist Meri Bekesheva voted in the capital, Bishkek.

"I think there was quite a lot of people who came to vote and I don't know about the situation in the south of the republic, in Osh and Jalalabad," she said.

Osh and Jalalabad are the southern cities hardest hit by the ethnic violence.

After fleeing the clashes many Uzbeks have returned to discover family and friends were killed and their homes destroyed.

The government says turnout in the south was high but others such as Elmurat Katsymov, an ethnic Uzbek living in Osh, are not so sure.

"It was quiet with very few voters turning out. The Uzbek population has lost faith in the current government which is pushing for the referendum, so many decided not to go and thus expressed their discontent," he said.

The government says it lifted curfews and took steps to encourage Uzbeks to vote.

Many, including Meri Bekesheva, are wondering if Kyrgyzstan can now put the violence behind it.

"I hope that this referendum will help to stabilise the country but nobody can give a guarantee for it," Bekesheva said.

In the past five years two governments have been toppled by violent uprisings and now ethnic clashes have killed hundreds perhaps even thousands.

One thing that can be guaranteed in Kyrgyzstan is that change does not come easy.